That corner of your brain which is never turned off. No, not that one.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Random Stuff

A few happenings and goings on…

Lisa and I have been slowly working our way through episodes of Season 1 of ‘The Big Bang Theory’. Pretty funny stuff. Sheldon is hilarious. I try not to watch too much TV these days, but sometimes you need half an hour of funny, and these guys bring it.

I’ve also been watching a British series called ‘The IT Crowd’ via Netflix on Demand. Also very funny. Especially the first two episodes.

We’ve watched a bit of the Winter Olympics, but since Prime Time for NBC is 8-11 and I go to bed at 9:30, I don’t get to see much. I try to catch stuff on-line once in a while, but it’s hit and miss. NBC’s coverage has been horrible, and as I’ve said many times on Facebook, it sucks Donkey Balls.

The kids are doing well, though their annoying habit of not listening to us is getting really old, especially around bed time. They just don’t get that it is not okay for them to watch TV at the top of the stairs every night. Friday night, I was going to watch the movie ‘District 9’, but one of the previews was for a horror film, and Lorelai saw a scene that was pretty scary, and for a while there, I thought we were in for a really long night.

We spent the weekend doing yard work, and have the gardens ready to go for the year, with the exception of the kid’s garden, which just needs a little more dirt. I don’t think their vegetables are going to grow much this year, since peas and beans aren’t resistant to the Tonka Bulldozer fungus, but we’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

I’m currently reading ‘Boneshaker’ by Cherie Priest, who I met at last year’s Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference. I like the book, though the beginning was a little… forced. She had to cover a lot of back story in a short amount of time. I know how that goes. The middle is pretty good and makes me want to keep reading. It’s my first foray into the genre of SteamPunk and Zombies. I don’t think zombies will make many appearances in my books, but you never know.

On the writing side of the house, my break from writing (to read and do some other things), is quickly coming to an end. I was planning on working a whole other book, separate from the Jake Clarke series, but I’ve been forcing myself to try to figure out the plot for the next book in the JC Series, which eventually turned into the next 2 books, thanks to a suggestion by my wife. I’ve had the 3rd book figured out of a few days, but the 4th was giving me headaches, until this morning, when I finally hit on a plot that made the hair on my neck stand up. That’s usually the sign for me that' I’m onto something. So with a little more refining over the next couple of days, and I’ll have the general outline. Then I’ll dive a little deeper to make sure there aren’t any major holes, and break the plot for each into acts. Once I know where each act is going, it’s time to write. Hopefully this approach minimizes the full scale re-writes that have plagued the first two books. We’ll see.